


Bleeding Effect

by warbreaker



Category: The Evil Within (Video Game)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multiple Viewpoints, Possession, Post-Canon, Thriller, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-07 03:13:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4247241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warbreaker/pseuds/warbreaker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Joseph is unplugged from the STEM system and escapes from Mobius's grip with Sebastian in tow. Unfortunately, though, while Ruvik's consciousness continues to exist inside of Leslie's body, no one can ever truly be free. It's going to take a lot more than a final boss battle to end this for good, but that's easier said than done while the lines of reality and unreality begin to blur.</p><p>**Pairings, rating, and tags all subject to change as more chapters are added.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, here we go again. My next big TEW project. I've been meaning to write this one for a while. The idea for this came from [a piece of artwork done by enyen](http://enyen.tumblr.com/post/103099745599/after-he-got-shot-by-kidman-joseph-was-able-to), though of course things didn't pan out quite the same way in the story itself.
> 
> For those curious, yes, the title "Bleeding Effect" is a nod to the Assassin's Creed series, since STEM and the animus seem to have a lot of similarities in terms of their effects on the user.

For most of his journey throughout STEM, Joseph found it hard to breathe. The air was heavy and oppressive, layered with humidity so thick that walking felt like swimming. It was the worst in enclosed spaces — in dark, cramped hallways reeking of rot and carrion, festering with death and the putrefaction of corpses. Joseph wasn't sure if the damp air was a purposeful addition meant to exacerbate his migraines and blurred vision, but it sure seemed that way most times.

Unfortunately for him, this time the world outside and the open streets did nothing to ease the pressure or open his airways, but he was at least able to recognize it as the distraction that it was meant to be. Thunderless lightning streaked through the sky and split the still-darkening clouds overhead, threatening a storm. Flashes of white-hot brilliance reflected off of the cheerfully colored floor tiles in the playground, both blinding and hypnotizing as they attempted to scatter his focus.

An hour-long second held the world in limbo. Silent stillness pressed hard at the edges of reality until Joseph thought it might burst.

"So tell me," Sebastian said, his voice cutting through the air like a knife. "What _is_ he after?"

Joseph held his breath, wondering how it had come to this. He hadn't wanted to believe. When his partner had first voiced his suspicions towards their rookie detective, Joseph immediately wrote off the idea as ridiculous. Now, here they were amidst the remains of the crumbling Krimson City, Sebastian with his revolver fixed on Kidman, who was in turn pointing her own sidearm at some poor escaped mental patient. Though Joseph was poised and ready to jump out of cover and provide back-up at a second's notice, the thought of having to pull the trigger on someone whom he once trusted implicitly made him feel sick.

Kidman pulled back the hammer of her pistol.

"He's after Leslie," she said.

"What," Sebastian sneered, "he needs to finish his science project?"

"Don't patronize me," she snapped. "I have orders. I can't let him have this boy."

She hesitated and looked back over her shoulder at where Sebastian was standing. Joseph saw the window of opportunity open, and he took it. He darted out from his position behind the covered slide and stood his ground between Kidman's gun and Leslie's body. His hands tightened on the grip of his .45 as his pulse pounded between his ears. This was a real leap of faith that he was taking, but surely she wouldn't open fire on _him_ , would she?

"Leslie is the only one he can —"

Her words were cut off by a sudden shrill, earth-shattering scream. It ripped through Joseph's skull and cut deep into his mind, momentarily blocking out all sense of sight and sound. He pressed his fingers to his temple in an attempt to offset the pain of a thousand knives slicing into every nerve between his ears, but he found no relief there. So much was happening so quickly that it was almost impossible to make sense of it all. The ground shook and trembled beneath his feet. Asphalt cracked, the road split open, and entire buildings were swallowed down into sinkholes. Joseph was aware of glass shattering around him as windows burst beneath the pressure.

In the next second, Leslie took off at a run. A crack of gunfire followed his departure, and the bullet sliced through the air mere inches from Joseph's face. He looked up to find smoke dancing away from the barrel of Kidman's gun, and he raised his own as he jumped directly in the line of fire, not even bothering to think twice.

"Don't do it!"

He barely even got the words out before a .45 caliber round punched through his chest with enough force to knock him down. The world went black.

 

* * *

 

Joseph was aware that he was regaining consciousness before he even had the strength to open his eyes. Though he was sure that he was lying down, he still felt unbalanced, and he couldn't tell which direction he was facing or what was his orientation within the room itself. It almost felt like he was suspended in something — that he was submerged, at least partially, in water and was just floating there lazily — maybe in some kind of bathtub or something.

His head was pounding. As he crept closer and closer to lucidity, he tried to remember where he was or how he'd gotten there. It was a daunting task made worse by the way his skull felt like it was about to crack open every time he thought about it too hard. The most he could do was lie there and hope that whatever was ailing him would pass soon. He needed to get back to Sebastian, they needed to track down Kidman, and…

_Kidman._

That was right. The memory seemed clear as day now. Kidman had pulled a gun on a disabled boy, and Joseph had taken the bullet for him. He didn't know what to make of that or how to feel. He didn't regret his own actions, at the very least; it was his duty as an officer of the law to protect those unable to defend themselves, and he'd jump in the way again and again if he had to. On the other hand, he couldn't help but feel like this was all his fault in the first place. Kidman had been _his_ assigned rookie, _his_ responsibility. He should have been more observant, he should have been less stubborn, he should have —

"Unplug him."

The voice sounded like it was coming from two rooms away, being spoken through a tin can on a string. It was firm and undeniably feminine, and something about it struck a chord inside of him as being hauntingly familiar. Several different voices soon joined it, all seemingly female, but it was only that one in particular that stood out in his mind and tugged at the tangled strings of his memory, desperately seeking purchase.

A featherweight touch of fingertips brushed across his forehead and into his hairline. Long, slender fingers fanned out along the side of his head and feathered through his hair, and whoever they belonged to was exceptionally gentle as they cradled him forward. Though his whole body felt leaden and his eyelids were heavy, Joseph summoned his strength and cracked his eyes open.

The world around him was a blinding white blur, so directionless and out of focus that it made him feel dizzy all over again. It took all of his willpower not to close his eyes again, knowing that he would never be able to get them back open if he did. Gradually, he was able to discern the color of pale, pink skin, separate from the white shirt draped over it. A second later, he came to realize that what he was actually staring at what a woman's clavicle.

"Kidman…" he mumbled weakly.

"Shh," she urged quietly, her voice as gentle as her touch. "You're alright. I've got you."

Her words barely made sense to him in this state, and even less so when he considered the source. Hadn't Kidman just shot him? Now she was caretaking him with all the tenderness of a lover? Joseph felt her other hand come around to the back of his head, resting at the base of his skull. There was a flick of her wrist and a sudden relief in pressure that he hadn't even noticed he'd been suffering from until now. Had he been stuck with something — had he literally been _plugged in_ somewhere?

Kidman carefully laid his head back against whatever it was that he was resting on, and he caught a brief, fuzzy glimpse at her face. There was clear worry etched into her strong features, accompanied by something else that Joseph couldn't quite identify. Sorrow? Regret? Maybe even affection.

 _Don't kid yourself,_ he scolded internally. _You never had a chance._

His eyes drifted shut again. After that, he lost track of time; he had no idea how long he spent drifting in and out of consciousness, never truly resting and only picking up pieces of unknowable conversations as they hovered past him. That familiar voice flickered in and out of his awareness, giving simple orders or measuring time. Sometimes she sounded very close, almost like she was standing right up beside him, and other times she seemed miles away — but her voice was the only one he ever heard clearly. Even Kidman's faded into the din rabble after a time.

When he finally found the strength to open his eyes again, his rookie was standing beside him. Maybe she'd never actually moved from that spot. Her attention was fixed on some enormous monitor near his head, and he was mildly surprised to find that she was still dressed in her full detective's outfit — everything from her blouse to her badge to her harness to her gun.

Joseph hesitated as that last detail sank in.

_Her gun._

It would be a longshot, but he couldn't squander this chance. He watched her from the corner of his vision, feigning unconsciousness as she toiled at the monitor. Part of him already felt guilty for what he was planning: disarming his rookie and holding her at gunpoint. After all, she took care of him earlier and at least _seemed_ to be worried about his well-being. Maybe she was just trying to help. Then again, she _did_ admit to taking orders from a third party, and she did _shoot_ him…

She turned towards him and gave him a once-over glance. There was no more time to think about it. Just as it seemed like she was about to turn away from him, he bolted upright and reached for the grip of her pistol, ripping it from the holster and leveling the barrel right between her eyes.

Holy shit. It'd worked.

Joseph's head was spinning. A loud, electronic buzzing sound bounced back and forth between his ears, and for a split second, everything went white. It passed as quickly as it came, and when he finally found his mental footing, Kidman had both hands in the air and a startled look on her face. Joseph set his jaw and adjusted his grip on his weapon, unsure of what to do next. Sebastian had always been the impulsive one between the two of them; going into this without him and without a plan had probably been the worst decision he could have made.

"Joseph," Kidman said nervously. "Don't. I can explain. I — just put the gun down."

Her words traveled right past him, barely stopping to register in his brain at all. He was too distracted by his admittedly belated observance of the strange mark on her left hand. It almost looked like someone had cut her, leaving a horizontal slice halfway across her palm that turned vertically down the length of her wrist. His first thought was that it was an unfinished T or an upside down L, but the more he looked at it, the more it started to look less like a letter and more like a picture.

 _A rail spike?_ he wondered.

It was only then that he took the time to quickly survey his surroundings. The walls and floor were white and sterile, covered by cables, tubs, and machines that seemed to circle around the center of the room. He'd seen them before, back when Sebastian had first found him in STEM…

"Is this…" he wondered aloud. "... Beacon?"

"Yes," Kidman said. "Now would you put the damn gun down? Nobody here's gonna hurt you if you just calm down, alright?"

He wanted to. Really, he did. The last thing that Joseph wanted was to look at Kidman like she was the enemy, and he _especially_ didn't want to be in a position that forced him to hold a gun to her head. He hesitated, taking another quick look around. The windows on the far walls seemed to lead nowhere into darkness, and the human brain placed at the center of the machine glowed with an ominous, unnatural light. There was something wrong about this place, but he couldn't quite put his finger on what it was.

"Detective Oda, please. Be reasonable."

It was that familiar voice again, this time coming from his left. It still sounded just as calm and cool and collected as it ever had. Joseph pivoted in his seat, vaguely aware of the water in his tub sloshing about as he brought his weapon around.

When he finally saw her, he nearly dropped everything.

" _Myra?_ " he sputtered, feeling faint.

"Yes," she said simply. "Now, if you wouldn't mind lowering your weapon. No one else here is armed."

He couldn't move; he couldn't think. His pulse raced at a thousand beats per second as his mind struggled to make sense of what he was seeing. Myra had been missing for two years, and yet there she was, standing right there in front of him and talking to him as though she'd never been gone. Joseph reached out with one hand and steadied himself on the rim of the tub, repositioning himself into a crouch for better balance and steadier footing. He never once took his gun off of Myra.

If she even _was_ Myra anymore.

"Where's Sebastian?" he asked cautiously.

"In a safe place," she answered.

Joseph two-handed the grip of his weapon and scowled at her response.

"That isn't what I asked you," he pressed.

She took a second before giving a slight nod towards her left side. Joseph spared a quick glance over his shoulder in that direction, and surely enough, there was Sebastian, plugged into the terminal three tubs down from his own. It didn't make any sense. He looked back at Myra with a puzzled stare. He could have forgiven her for not trying her hardest to save or help _him_ , but for her to just leave Sebastian plugged into some crazy machine and watch him suffer? It was unthinkable.

"Kidman," he said, though he kept his full attention on Myra. "Go unplug Sebastian from the machine."

"I can't," she said. She sounded sincere.

Almost reluctantly, Joseph switched his sights and trained his weapon back onto her again.

"I wasn't asking," he said.

"You don't understand," she protested. "I can't just—"

"Ms. Kidman," Myra cut in. "Didn't you pay attention during Detective Oda's training? When you find yourself in a situation in which an armed man has a gun pointed at your head, you acquiesce to his demands immediately and without question."

"But—" Kidman argued.

"You do that because you have to make sure that you survive the ordeal in order to apprehend him later," Joseph clarified. "I _know_ that Sebastian and I taught you that."

She looked as though she was about to argue further, but a quick glance in Myra's direction silenced her. Finally, she relented, and with a heavy sigh she dropped her hands and headed towards Sebastian's terminal. Joseph followed her with his eyes as she went, and once she reached the machine, he made the move to leave his own. The act was simultaneously harder and easier than he'd expected. He felt sluggish, weak, and off-balance, but he was able to steady himself on the rim again with one hand. He threw one leg over the side. Then the other.

As soon as his second foot hit the floor, he stumbled. His knees buckled and his legs nearly gave out entirely, unable to support the weight of his body. His clothes were heavy and drenched in whatever strange liquid he'd been submerged in, and the water felt like an anchor trying to pull him to the floor.

Someone caught him.

"Allow me," she said.

This voice, he didn't recognize at all. Knees still trembling, Joseph made sure to stabilize his hold on the rim of the tub before looking over his shoulder at the woman who helped support him.

He'd never seen her before in his life. She was young and slim, with Hispanic features that were only barely hidden beneath a pair of thick-framed glasses not entirely unlike his own. Like Myra, she wore a black suit, though at this proximity Joseph could also clearly see the rail spike logo pinned on her lapel. There was a name printed beneath it.

_Mobius._

"Are you feeling alright?" she asked. "You don't look well at all."

Joseph's heart stopped beating. A dark sense of dread twisted his stomach in knots and sat cold and heavy at the bottom of his abdomen. This was wrong. This was all wrong. This woman had come up on him from out of nowhere; she could have easily disarmed him or stuck him with a knife — he was holding two of her companions at gunpoint, after all — but instead she used the element of surprise to simply catch him as he was about to fall? Then asked him if he was well?

He could just _feel_ the trap on him, hovering over his head and ready to spring itself at any second. He was weak and disoriented — he could barely stand up on his own — and yet not a single one of these women made any attempt to overpower him. Hell, just Myra alone could've disarmed him even when he was at full health. Yet, they all simply went along with whatever he said just because he was holding a gun. There were parts of the puzzle that he was missing.

"Okay, he's unplugged," Kidman called from the other side of the room. "Can we talk now? Please?"

"Take him out of there," Joseph ordered, trying his hardest to sound confident.

She sighed audibly.

"Joseph, I don't care _how_ many guns you have pointed in my face," she said. "I can't lift Sebastian on my own."

"Myra, help her," he said, looking over in her direction.

Myra's response was a simple nod of her head coupled with immediate obedience. The clicking of her heels echoed off of the linoleum floor as she walked, and the sound bounced back and forth between Joseph's ears, leaving him feeling dazed and distracted.

 _It's so quiet,_ he thought. _Things are too easy for me, and it's too quiet. These three can't be the only ones running this operation. Where's everyone else?_

Just the mere thought of it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, and his skin prickled with the sudden feeling of being watched. That distinct sense of wrongness that he'd felt back when he first approached the hospital doors returned ten-fold, and his heart hammered in his chest as anxiety took over. This was a set-up. He was convinced of it now, and whoever was orchestrating it was playing him like a fiddle. He had to get out. Now.

"Get him up!" he shouted, pulling himself away from the mysterious woman and heading towards Sebastian's tub.

Christ, he felt like a criminal, waving a gun around and impatiently barking orders at hostages. STEM had done a good job of showing him what he was _really_ capable of, and it seemed like the lesson wasn't over just yet. His strength returned with each passing second, and by the time Myra and Kidman successfully hoisted Sebastian out of the water, Joseph almost felt confident enough to carry the man himself.

Of course, he wasn't stupid. He knew that dragging his partner's dead weight would be suicide.

"Take him out to the car," he said. "Put him in the back."

Kidman drew her eyebrows together and looked as though she was about to start up another argument, but Myra already started forward. It left her with no choice but to follow, lest they both end up dropping Sebastian entirely. Joseph held his ground, monitoring them both as they all but dragged his partner along with them, each supporting him with an arm draped around their shoulders.

As soon as they were a safe distance away, Joseph gave another quick look around the room, just in case there was anything he had missed. The various tubs arranged around the room housed other people — Beacon patients, mostly, with a few other stragglers that he didn't recognize. He would have bet money that all of them would match up with the missing persons files back at the department.

That only left him with one loose end: the mysterious woman in the suit who'd caught him before he fell. He raised his gun, and she immediately put her hands up.

"You too," he said. "I'm sorry, but I can't have you just stay here and call for backup."

"As you wish," she said, sounding exhausted.

The woman dropped her hands and strolled after Kidman and Myra, leaving Joseph to ponder over the fact that he'd just apologized to someone he'd pulled a gun on. Man, he _really_ wasn't cut out for shit like this. With a small sigh and a shake of his head, he picked up the trail and followed all three women out of the room and into the hall.

"Do you have a name?" he asked the woman, staying two steps behind her at all times.

"Tatiana," she said simply.

"Last name?" he asked.

"Guiterrez."

It sounded horribly familiar. He wracked his brain, trying to remember where he'd heard it before or why, but he came up blank.

"Tatiana Guiterrez…" he repeated back at her softly. A half-second later, he realized he'd actually spoken aloud. Feeling somewhat embarrassed, he fumbled for a recovery. "That's a pretty name."

"Thank you, Detective," she said.

Up ahead, Kidman scoffed, and Joseph swore he could just _hear_ her rolling her eyes. Myra silently pressed the call button for the elevator, and the doors opened for them without delay. One by one, they piled inside. The car was large enough to comfortably house all of them, having been built to accommodate a stretcher and a team of doctors. The doors closed again when Myra hit the button for the ground floor.

"You know, Joseph," Kidman spoke up, "for being both the smartest and the nicest person I've ever met in my life, you sure are acting like a real stupid jerk right now. Since when do you, of all people, refuse to listen to reason?"

Part of him felt like he should've been offended by that — or felt anything about it at all, really — but the only thing that existed inside of Joseph right now was a sense of hollowness strung up by disbelief. It seemed he'd already compartmentalized everything that was happening before even consciously realizing that he had to. The only thing that broke his outer mask of calm during a crisis situation was the dim and muted sense of urgency he felt to get as far away from this place as physically possible, lest the other shoe drop and he ended up trapped here forever.

He looked over at Sebastian, as though his partner could've possibly held some answers for him. The man barely even looked like himself, suspended helplessly between their rookie and his missing wife, head hanging limply and hair in his face as he remained dead to the world. If only he'd just wake up; Sebastian would know how to handle this situation leagues better than Joseph ever could.

Steeling his nerves, Joseph glanced back at Kidman, but he had to look away again just as quickly. Her betrayal cut deeper than he consciously allowed himself to acknowledge, and it was suddenly apparent just how hellish this was going to be to deal with once he removed himself from the situation and had a moment to decompress. He sure as hell wasn't looking forward to _that_ little breakdown.

"You'll have to forgive me if I don't immediately take the words of someone who shot me in the chest to be reasonable," he said.

"What are you talking about?" she asked honestly. "You took my gun from me."

He wasn't about to argue with her. The elevator _ding_ ed as it reached the ground floor, and the car took a second to settle before the doors opened again.

"Let's go," Myra said confidently. It almost sounded like an order.

Much to Joseph's surprise, the lobby was in the exact same condition it'd been when he first walked through it, though he honestly wasn't sure what he'd expected. The floors and walls were splattered with blood, and bodies of the deceased littered the entire room. Corpses were draped across benches and chairs in the waiting area, and even the receptionist's desk looked like a scene from a horror story.

Interestingly, the smell seemed no worse. At least a dozen bodies had been left out, seemingly untouched, and yet the stench of death seemed only mild at best. Just how long had it been since he was last up here?

The walk outside was made in silence. Tatiana pushed the doors open, and the fresh air was cool and relaxing as a light breeze brushed past Joseph's face. A faint sprinkling of rain pattered against his shoulders as he stepped outside, but it was a welcome alternative to the staleness inside. This scene also remained unchanged. The abandoned ambulances and police cruisers in and of themselves weren't particularly alarming, but the lack of a crowd gathered around them was. Some of the vehicles still had their lights on, and some even still had their engines running, yet there was no standing mob of civilian gawkers and rubberneckers anywhere in sight.

"Where is everybody?" Joseph asked aloud.

"Working, I would assume," Tatiana said.

Something about that answer bothered him, but he let it go for now. Kidman led the way towards the same cruiser that she and Joseph had arrived in together, and he performed the kindness of opening the back door for her. He knew that he didn't have to — and really, he _shouldn't_ have done it — but there was some stupidly naive part of him that felt guilty for letting everyone else do all of the work. Myra gently let go of her grip on her husband and circled around to the other side of the car, opening the opposite door in order to help Kidman load Sebastian safely into the back seat.

What happened next actually caught Joseph as a surprise.

With Sebastian laid out comfortably across the seat, Myra crouched down seemingly to get closer to eye level with him. Her touch was gentle and affectionate as she brushed her fingertips across his forehead, moving his hair away from his face. Her hand came to rest on the side of his jaw soon thereafter, cupping his cheek and lightly caressing it with her thumb. It was an oddly intimate gesture — so much so that Joseph even contemplated looking away.

He thought better of it when he noticed Myra's gloves. White gloves — surgical gloves, maybe — with what appeared to be a red rail spike on the back. It was the exact same one that'd been on Tatian's pin. The same one that was carved into Kidman's hand. What the hell could it possibly mean?

"I would assume that you're going to tell him that you've seen me," she said suddenly.

"Of course I will," Joseph replied.

"Knowing Sebastian as you do," she said, "can you really say with confidence that that's the best course of action?"

"He has a right to know, Myra," he pressed.

She didn't respond at first. She kept her eyes trained on Sebastian's face for a few seconds longer, as though saying her silent goodbyes, and Joseph finally understood the true reason why he wanted to look away. It wasn't that he felt as though he was intruding on a private moment. Rather, it was for his own sake — to keep a level head and bite back the boiling anger rising within him. Myra had been their _captor_ , for God's sake — she'd disappeared without a trace for two years, nearly driving her husband into the ground with his grief and leaving Joseph to pick up the pieces. And she had the gall to feign concern and affection for him _now?_

"You have no clue what you did to him, do you?" he hissed. "What you're _still_ doing to him."

"I have an idea," she said, rising to her feet.

She shoved the car door closed, and Kidman did the same on her and Joseph's side of the vehicle. He balled his free hand into a fist, feeling rage and hate well up inside of him, touching at the back of his eyes and pressing against his brain. It was a rush of emotions that he'd become well-acquainted with in recent memory; it came with the familiar black sickness like tar on his insides, burning away his rationality and burrowing deep inside of him like a parasite.

"Unfortunately, we don't have time for this conversation," Myra concluded.

She headed back around to where Joseph was standing, calm and confident as she stopped well within arm's reach of him. It was insulting, in a way, almost like she was knowingly calling his bluff — because she was. No matter what happened, he would never pull the trigger on Sebastian's wife. Not like this, at any rate. He knew that she knew it, too.

Feeling defeated, Joseph holstered his weapon. Myra reached into the inner pocket of her blazer, and he had a brief moment of panic, half-expecting her to pull out a weapon of her own. Instead, dangling between her thumb and forefinger were a set of keys. Car keys for a police cruiser, to be exact. The cold metal caught the sunlight as they swayed lazily in midair, and Joseph wrinkled his brow in confusion. How in the world had she gotten these?

"If you want my suggestion," she said, "for all that it's worth, you should get Sebastian as far away from this city as quickly as possible. Warn him that the entire town is being monitored, because it is. Not a single thing happens on these streets that Mobius doesn't know about. That should buy you enough time to think of a better plan to keep the both of you from being pulled back into the system."

Joseph raised a cautious hand and accepted the keys from her, feeling equal parts confused, angry, and betrayed. However, the anger was quick to subside in favor of the confusion the longer he looked at her. There was a light shade of guilt and regret tinting the cold blue of Myra's eyes, though she hid it well. It was only due to his close relationship with her and Sebastian that Joseph was able to see it at all. He doubted the other two women could.

"Myra…" he started. "He should hear all of this from you, not me. He still loves you. You mean the world to him."

"I'm giving you both a chance to escape with your lives and minds still intact," she said. "You're wasting time."

With that, she moved to walk past him, back towards the doors of Beacon Mental Hospital. He watched her as she went, dumbfounded and empty from the exchange. If he just let her go now, there was no guarantee that he'd ever see her again — that _Sebastian_ would ever see her again. But what was he supposed to do…?

As though reading his thoughts, she turned back around to look at him one last time.

"It was nice seeing you again, by the way," she said.

She continued on her way.

Kidman stepped forward then, wringing her hands and looking pale with stage fright. It didn't suit her.

"Joseph, I…" she struggled. "You should go. And I'm sorry. For everything. I'll find a way to make this right."

It was such a far cry from the frustration and the attitude that she'd been giving him up until this point that he wasn't sure if he'd heard her correctly.  Worse than that, against his better judgement and higher faculties, her apology went straight to his heart. Kidman wasn't someone who apologized easily, and seeing her so rattled kickstarted the part of his brain that still felt responsible for and protective of her — both as her superior and as something else.

_Damn it._

"Come with us," he blurted out.

"I can't," she said. "I want to. Believe me, I do. But my place is here. Just… take care of Sebastian. We'll handle the rest."

Before he could say anything else, she turned tail and left. Tatiana joined her, and suddenly Joseph was alone — left with a set of keys, an unconscious partner, and too many questions and moral dilemmas to count.

 

* * *

 

The roads were empty when he pulled onto them. Not just the roads, either — there were no pedestrians walking the sidewalks, and not a single building seemed to house any sort of life at all. It was almost as if the whole city had gotten up and moved. Joseph took a shaky breath as he stopped at a red light, wondering if he should've even bothered to at all.

There was a flash of light.

White, blinding, and disorienting, it seemed to block out all of his senses at once, and for a fraction of a second, Joseph had no idea where or who he was. He was directionless, weightless, and miles and miles away from where he'd last left himself.

And just like that, he came to again. He shook his head in an attempt to regain his bearings. When his vision came back into focus, the city was back to normal again. It looked like any other Friday afternoon — crowded and busy, with people on all sides hurrying to and from appointments, both business and personal. The familiar sounds of the city returned as well — sounds of car engines rumbling and tires rolling across the asphalt — noises in the distance of power tools and construction from the various projects of city-wide upkeep — all blanketed underneath the dull roar and murmur of people walking and talking and co-existing in each other's lives.

Joseph looked around curiously, wondering if his surroundings had been like this the entire time and he'd just failed to notice. What could've caused a change like that? He took a steadying breath and faced forward again, waiting for the light to signal the go-ahead. His hands gripped the wheel a little tighter, and from the very bottom of his periphery, he noticed something on his forearm. He turned his left hand over, palm to the sky, and saw what appeared to be a fresh wound cut down the length of his wrist.

His heart sank, anchored down by the sudden onset of dread.

 _No,_ he told himself. _No, it can't possibly…_

Breathing shallow little breaths, he carefully peeled his left glove off with his right hand.

The image of a rail spike was burned underneath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like I said in the summary, way more fun stuff to come. So, if you came here for ship stuff, just be patient. We have a whole world ahead of us. This was actually technically supposed to be a prologue, but AO3 won't let me make it a prologue, so it'll stay labeled as chapter 1.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading. As always, I'd love to hear from you, and any constructive criticism is welcome.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter dedicated to lotuskasumi, without whom it may have never been written.

Myra had just barely reached the doors of Beacon Hospital when she heard Joseph close the door of the police cruiser. She didn't look back even when he ignited the engine. She had come so far in her endeavors to have second thoughts about her mission now, and there was simply too much at stake for her to misstep even once. It hadn't been news to her that she would have to see Sebastian and Joseph again — maybe even speak to them — but Joseph waking up out of STEM was certainly not part of the plan. And letting them both go like that…

"That was unwise," Tatiana piped up from her left, as though reading her thoughts.

In another life, that would have been Myra's line. She could almost see herself there again now — a disapproving look on her own face and her arms folded over her chest as she scolded her then-fiance for some handling of a case they were working on. Back then, Sebastian would give her a sigh and a look that was equal parts serious and apologetic as he explained to her that it wasn't always about being wise or "playing the game" — sometimes it was about doing the right thing _because_ it was right. He'd been the one to teach her that there was more to policework than getting the job done and apprehending criminals; it was about upholding a standard of moral goodness and setting an example that people would want to follow.

But, thanks to her, Sebastian wasn't here. Myra knew that she could easily spin this to sound like her decision had been logical and methodical, but in that moment, she had the almost overwhelming urge to pour her heart out — to be impulsive and emotional and passionate about what she'd done. It was that very passion that had attracted her to her husband in the first place. Sometimes Myra herself became exhausted by her own stringency and demands for excellence; Sebastian had been the perfect counterweight.

She supposed she was just going to have to be her exhaustingly predictable self for just a little while longer.

"On camera, it will appear as a glitch in the system," she explained. "The technology isn't perfect. He knows this."

"And when he discovers the device on your person?" Tatiana asked.

"You let me worry about that," she said. "And about him."

From behind them, the heavy hospital doors stuttered open. Myra didn't bother to look back as the feverish sound of clicking heels echoed off of the linoleum floor and through the cavernous lobby. Kidman caught up with them before they even reached the elevator, and that in and of itself was mildly surprising. On some level, Myra had honestly expected her to go off with Sebastian and Joseph. After all, her inevitable attachment to the two of them was precisely the reason why Myra had handpicked her for recruitment into Mobius in the first place.

"I hope you know what you're doing," Kidman breathed as the elevator doors opened. "I mean, what am I gonna tell The Administrator as to why I just carried Sebastian out to his car and let him escape? I don't really think he'll take 'Joseph had a gun to my head, and this was part of my police training' as an excuse."

Myra listened patiently and was slow to respond. She strode into the elevator and gently pressed the button for the basement floor as the other two women filed in behind her. The doors closed, and the mechanical hum of gears turning and cords and pulleys activating filled the space between all three of them as the car began its descent.

"What would you say if someone else asked you?" she finally responded. "Someone not in Mobius, for example."

"I'd…" Kidman said hesitantly. "I'd say I did it because it was the right thing to do. Because I owed Sebastian and Joseph for looking out for me. It was the least I could do in return."

It was hard to bite back the smile that fought to tug at her lips, but Myra managed victoriously. So much of Sebastian had rubbed off on his protege already.

"Mobius hasn't looked out for you?" she asked, already knowing the answer.

"Not like they did," Kidman said. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to sound ungrateful. It's just different with the two of them. I don't really know how to explain it."

"I believe the word you're looking for is 'family,'" Tatiana cut in.

At that, Myra could no longer fight off the faint smile that appeared on her face — close-lipped and subtle as it was. Kidman's honesty had been expected, as was her subsequent sentimentality and hand-wringing. What she hadn't counted on was Tatiana's little dig — though, really, she should have. While Kidman was little more than an extra sword and shield for Sebastian and Joseph, Tatiana was someone whom Myra trusted completely. The nurse knew all of the ins and outs of every plan, and her dry glibness just made it a joy to be around her.

"Yet you seem to have no problem saying this to me," Myra said, "both as a part of Mobius and as your superior."

"You're the one who told me to drag him out there in the first place!" Kidman shot back. "What, was I supposed to just _lie_ to you now?"

The elevator car settled on the basement floor, and the doors yawned open. Myra led the way back to the STEM terminal at an unhurried pace. Though they were only three in number, the sound of footsteps echoing off of the walls all at once made them sound like an army. It was soothing, in its own way. They were going to _need_ an army soon.

"No," Myra answered her. "I expect and appreciate your honesty on all matters, no matter what form it takes. However, _he_ will not. Fortunately, you won't have to worry about keeping your story straight. You won't remember it clearly to begin with."

"What?" Kidman blurted out. "Wait a minute…"

"Regardless of what you've been told," Myra said, "there is much about STEM that we still don't fully understand. The deterioration or preservation of memories is one of them."

 _All because I underestimated Ruvik and the scale of his corruption,_ she tacked on mentally. _I'm sorry, Juli. That one was my fault._

"Wait, we're still in STEM?" Kidman asked, sounding mildly panicked.

"I pulled us in to get us out," Myra said simply.

Guilt crept up inside of her then, both poignant and purposeful. Truth be told, she had no idea what the mark on Kidman's hand meant. The fact that it was now an element in this equation far beyond her control scared her more profoundly than anything else had for a long, long time. What kind of fate would befall Kidman as a result of this? More importantly, what would it mean for Sebastian and Joseph? Could Myra really send the young agent out to help them now, not knowing what would happen to or around her?

"You know, I don't understand you," Kidman said suddenly. She moved towards the terminal that Sebastian had been lying in and gave the machine a sour look. "You're Sebastian's wife. I didn't know that. Why are you with Mobius? I mean… What do you want?"

Myra gave her a silent smile as she reached into the inner pocket of her blazer. The switch to activate or deactivate the wireless STEM system was warm to the touch, even through her gloves.

"What every good detective wants," she said simply. "Justice."

She flipped the switch.

The transition back from STEM into the real world was immediate and far less jarring than Myra thought it would be. People flickered into existence around her like a lightbulb struggling for its last few moments of life. Men and women toiled around each terminal in hazmat suits, each especially designed to protect them from the dangers of STEM, and were nearly camouflaged against the blinding white of the walls and floor. Last to come into view were the subjects themselves in the tubs — patients both alive and dead — the corpse of the good Doctor Jimenez, of Officer Oscar Connelly, and last of all…

Myra immediately started in Leslie's direction once she set her eyes on him. In all of the excitement, she'd somehow forgotten the most important piece of the puzzle. With Sebastian having been pulled out of the system prematurely, there was no way of telling what that would mean for Leslie — or, more importantly, what that would mean for Ruvik. Hopefully, it hadn't actually been premature. Hopefully Sebastian had reached his goal in time, hopefully he'd —

She didn't even get halfway to the terminal before Leslie bolted upright into a sitting position, coughing wildly and looking disoriented. Myra stopped dead in her tracks as two agents in hazmat suits beat her to the tub, and her heart sank in her chest as she looked on. People weren't supposed to just snap out of the system like that — not even people who were technically supposed to be the key to unlocking it. Something about this was wrong.

Slowly, subtly, Myra reached into her suit jacket. Anything that Ruvik could do, she could undo.

Right?

Her fingertips barely even brushed the switch when Leslie let out an ear-piercing scream. It was like a thousand nails being dragged across a thousand chalkboards, amplified to the level of an air raid siren. Myra closed her eyes and cradled her head with her hand in order to keep it from splitting open. Her other hand yanked the STEM remote out from her jacket.

As soon as it came free, the whole world went silent and still. Unnaturally so. With a great deal of trepidation, she straightened her posture and dropped her one hand back down to her side. It was as if everyone around her had been caught in a freeze frame, trapped in mid-action like a bunch of mannequins being posed for a picture.

Everyone, that was, except for Leslie Withers, who was staring directly at her. His blue eyes were crystal clear, focused, and he looked not at all like the confused, traumatized boy that she knew him to be. Anxiety tugged at her insides as she met his gaze, making her chest feel tight. She pressed her thumb against the switch in her hands, but she didn't flip it just yet.

"Myra Castellanos," Leslie said calmly, smugly. There was something undeniably haunting about hearing him enunciate so clearly. "What do you think you're doing?"

Before she could respond or react, the remote control shattered in her hand. She let out a heavy breath and held her ground, refusing to show fear. There was a fire roaring behind Leslie's eyes — no. Not Leslie. Ruvik. _Ruben._

And it burned.

She heard it before she felt it — the sound of sizzling and searing against flesh and fabric. A second later, the pain shot through her, white-hot and lightning fast, from the center of her palm all the way up to her shoulder. She hissed and grasped her left wrist with her right hand as she stared down at the source of her pain.

There it was, burning bright like iron pulled from a forge. The image of a rail spike was branded into her palm and forearm — the exact same one that Kidman now sported. Myra could feel her resolve waver as hope began to drain out of her.

"No!" she gasped.

When she looked up again, Ruvik was standing not a foot away from her, wearing Leslie's face. Myra refused to step back or cower away, even when those blue eyes pierced into her like needles probing into her skull. She straightened her stance and met his gaze. At full height, she was taller than him. It was a small source of power, but she'd take anything she could get.

"Did you really think you could take down Mobius all by yourself?" Ruvik asked, his tone halfway mocking and halfway sincere. "That you could succeed where even I have failed? You and I want the same thing. Too bad you're so stubborn. Just like your husband was."

Myra set her jaw and closed her hands into fists. She couldn't fight him now — not here, not like this. For now, all she could hope to do was outlast him. As long as she kept a cool head, she would be fine.

"I wonder," Ruvik went on. "Do you have the same doubts and anxieties that he did? The same fear of abandonment? Except… you were the one who did the abandoning, not him. Did you know that he was looking outside of your marriage for affection?"

She refused to give him an answer. He was toying with her, and she knew it. While she wasn't religious by any stretch of the imagination, she did know one thing for sure: _The Devil always lies._

A knowing smirk twisted its way onto Ruvik's lips.

"I didn't think so."

* * *

The world felt distant and blurry as Sebastian floated through it. Dark gray storm clouds occasionally parted to make way for whispers and shadows — silhouettes of people he should have known but had never met. The thought crossed his mind that he might have been dead, and now he was staring down the rest of eternity, never moving, never speaking, as someone carried him to the other side.

Carried. He was being _carried._

As soon as the realization solidified in his mind, it felt like an anchor keeping him grounded. The storm clouds parted a little further, allowing more of the world to peek through. Whispers became voices, but they were still too muffled and far away for him to understand them. His head felt leaden on his shoulders, and every muscle in his body was useless, but his ears eventually became attuned to his surroundings. Cadences began to seem familiar as the people around him continued to speak, and for a flash of a second, he could have sworn that he was back in the KCPD building, though he wasn't quite sure why.

Then Myra's voice cut through the fog. It sounded close, but he still couldn't make out the words that she was saying. When he thought about it, he wasn't entirely sure if she was speaking directly to him at all. But if not to him, then who else could she be with…?

He wasn't being carried anymore. Sebastian wasn't exactly sure how or when it'd happened, but he knew without a doubt that he was now lying down. The mattress beneath him was firm and plush with a pillow top, just as he'd always remembered it. The down comforter was clean and soft as he fanned his fingers out on top of it, trying his hardest to rouse himself to full consciousness. Blood pounded between his ears, and his brain swelled and pulsed as it hammered insistently against his skull. He knew that he wasn't hungover, so where the hell did this headache come from?

As though having read his thoughts, Myra brushed the hair away from his face with two fingertips and gently cupped cupped his cheek. It was only then that he realized that he was using her lap as a pillow. Her touch and presence chased away his headache almost immediately, and he felt safer and more relaxed in that moment than he had in literal years. Cracking his eyes open, he shifted his position slightly and pressed a brief, affectionate kiss on the top of her knee.

"I love you," he murmured softly.

"Sebastian…" Myra's voice was clear now, but there was a distinct sadness in her words. "Wake up."

When he opened his eyes all the way, the world was black.

Seconds ticked by, long and lazy and meaningless in the dark. The lingering warmth left behind by Myra's hand soon faded away into a biting cold that Sebastian felt throughout his whole body. It took up residency at the pit of his chest, creating a slow-moving whirlpool of ice where his heart should have been. The feeling was one he'd become well-acquainted with over the past few years: loneliness. Crippling, bitter loneliness and abandonment by a world that didn't need him — a world where he was redundant and useless, and the only cure for that icy desolation was the fuzzy warmth of a glass of whiskey.

The rumble of the engine beneath him reverberated in his bones, bouncing off of that emptiness inside of him and making everything feel so much worse. His spine felt like it was twisted into a thousand knots, and he groaned quietly in discomfort as he tried to find a better position. Whatever he was lying on this time was soft but uneven, and it was _killing_ his back.

Worse than that was the sharp, stinging pain at the base of his skull. It wasn't like his headache from before — it was different somehow. More intense and focused. More precise. Sebastian took a deep breath and rolled his head to the side so that he could rub at the offending area. A tiny jolt of pain shot through him when he pressed on it, almost like the feeling of being punched in the arm after a tetanus shot. Had someone stuck him with something?

At the very least, it made him feel more lucid and concrete than he had before. It didn't feel like he was floating through a dream anymore; this time, it was real. His vision was blurry as he slowly blinked back into reality, but his surroundings took shape before long. Black seats. Black interior. Black wall.

"A… police cruiser?" he muttered aloud. How the hell had he gotten here?

"Seb?" Joseph's voice came from over the wall. "Seb, are you awake?"

Sebastian's heart leaped into his throat.

" _Joseph—_ "

He tried to sit up, to get his bearings, to reach out to him, but his body felt too weak, too unprepared. His head spun as a strong wave of vertigo crashed into him, and Sebastian fell back down onto the seat, feeling dizzy.

It all came back to him in a rush: the colorful floor of the park, the swings frozen in place, soap bubbles floating in air. Kidman. Leslie. _Joseph._ The cold, blind terror that had seized him when he heard the gunshot and saw his partner fall. After that, Sebastian couldn't really recall much else.

"I - I thought…" he struggled through ragged breaths. "I thought you were…"

Fuck. If only the world would stop spinning for a few seconds and give him the opportunity to string two thoughts together. He supposed it didn't really matter either way, though — what he saw, or what he _thought_ he saw. All that mattered was that they were both still alive. It wouldn't have been the first time that Kidman had shot one of them and they ended up surviving, after all. The relief he felt was palpable. How in the hell he had ended up worse for wear in comparison to Joseph, however, was far beyond him.

"I'm glad you're alright," he finished after a breath.

"I'm fine," Joseph replied, "so try not to strain yourself. I haven't had the time to check you for injuries. Are you feeling alright? How are your hands?"

Sebastian hesitated at that and blinked slowly in confusion. "My hands…?"

He raised them both to his face and took a good look at the palms first before turning them over to look at the backs. Nothing jumped out of him as being particularly out of the ordinary, except maybe for the fact that he was quite a bit cleaner than he'd expected himself to be.

"Yeah," Joseph said. There was something slightly off about the way he spoke, almost like he was covering up an elaborate lie. "Are they shaking at all? Or do you feel steady?"

"Looks normal to me," Sebastian said.

His partner gave no verbal response to that, and so Sebastian let the matter drop, too. Truth be told, he was just happy to hear Joseph's voice at all. Being in a car like this with him behind the wheel was such a comfort that it almost circled back around into alarming. Sebastian took an extra moment to gather his strength and enjoy the feeling of being in a safe place with someone whom he trusted unequivocally. It was something that he swore he would never take for granted again.

Yellow and red lights of the nighttime cityscape passed over him as Joseph drove past them. They reflected off of the slightly tinted windows in exaggerated spheres and rectangles like fluorescent shooting stars, and Sebastian had to wonder just what time of night it was. Had it been night time the last time he'd stepped outside? He couldn't remember.

When he felt at least marginally alert enough, he decided to give himself a once-over for injuries and save Joseph the trouble. Nothing felt broken as he carefully moved each of his limbs and patted himself down. As far as he could tell, he wasn't bleeding anywhere, either. The one thing that _did_ stand out to him, though, was that all of his weapons were gone. All of his guns, his ammo, the crossbow, even the lantern — they were all just _gone._ That was definitely a new one, though he supposed that he'd skirted by with the means to protect himself for far too long already.

Anchoring one hand beside him on the seat and grabbing at the back of it with the other, Sebastian slowly struggled to push himself up into a sitting position. It wasn't so much that he felt physically weak as it was that his head would just not stop pounding — that damnable headache was back again. Whatever he'd been stuck with must have been exceptionally nasty; the injection point stung and throbbed, and it took a second for his body to adjust to the balance of sitting upright.

He shook his head and rubbed at his eyes with his right hand as he shifted position to sit properly in his seat. If there had ever been any lingering doubt that they were in a police cruiser, it was gone now. Instead, it was replaced with anxious certainty as he considered all of the possible implications of what was happening. Joseph seemed to have turned off the scanner, the dash cam, and the center terminal — or maybe they just didn't work. That was either a good thing or a very, very bad one.

And then he looked out the window.

The streets were level and unbroken. Buildings stood upright, unperturbed by any shifts in the geography. Handfuls of people traversed the sidewalks and waited at corners to cross at the crosswalks — _real_ people. Unturned. Unhaunted. The very car that Sebastian was sitting in was part of the flow of traffic as everyone else around him seemed to carelessly go about their business. He twisted in his seat to look out the back windshield in disbelief, expecting the world to be falling away behind them, but there was nothing of the sort. Only the city remained. He righted his posture and glanced over at Joseph, feeling baffled.

"Where the hell are we?" he asked.

It felt like a stupid question. Of course this was Krimson City, but this was so much different from anything else he'd seen in Ruvik's little world of nightmares. Things were way too normal around here, and that in and of itself scared him far more than any monster or blood-soaked hallway that Ruvik had thrown at him thusfar. Where had all of these people even come from?

"A lot has happened," Joseph said, sounding uneasy, "but we're not in Beacon anymore. We're home, back in the real world. My goal is to get us as far away as possible, and then we're abandoning the car. We can't trust anyone from the PD anymore."

It was a lot to take in. Sebastian had to pause in order to let it all process in his head, and his hand found its way back to the base of his skull. So, that's what that was. He'd been hooked into STEM. While he knew he shouldn't have been surprised by the news, he was. He had absolutely no recollection of being hooked in, or even by whom. All of his recent memories were a fuzzy, jumbled up mess, and it was damn near impossible to separate what was real and what wasn't. Well, "real."

Something still bothered him, though. Joseph insisting that they couldn't trust the KCPD anymore was something that he'd never thought he'd hear. It seemed like just yesterday that his partner was scolding him for having unfounded paranoia and for making up conspiracy theories. The memory of it still ate at him. Back then, it'd felt simultaneously like a dismissal and a betrayal, with the latter amplified by a hundred-fold once Joseph filed his report with Internal Affairs — which he _still_ hadn't apologized for. The mere thought of it left Sebastian feeling extremely petty and defensive.

"You're starting to sound like me," he said bitterly.

He could see Joseph's eyes flicker towards him in the rearview mirror, and there was a stubborn anger there that was not at all unfamiliar to him.

"Like I said, a lot has happened," Joseph said, clearly putting forth an effort to keep his temper. "There are things that you don't know yet, Sebastian. Things that —"

"So how did we get out?" Sebastian cut him off.

He really didn't want to hear it, and as much as he wanted to pick a fight about this, it wasn't the time or the place. For a split second, he swore that he saw smoke coming out of Joseph's ears. To his credit, his partner composed himself without exploding and took a deep breath before he answered.

"To make a long story short," he said, "I held Kidman at gunpoint and dragged you out."

Both of Sebastian's eyebrows shot up in surprise. Of all of the things he'd expected Joseph to say, that had been at the bottom of the list. It wasn't like the man to be so impulsive, and the exact nature of Kidman's involvement in this raised more questions than it answered.

"Ballsy," he said in mild disbelief. "How did _that_ go?"

"I didn't enjoy it," Joseph answered. "But, to tell you the truth, Seb, it felt too easy. Suspiciously so. I felt the trap looming over me, but it never sprung. We've got to be careful from here on out if we don't want to get caught. We'll be getting rid of the car the first chance we get."

Sebastian settled back in his seat as he digested the information. They were running on borrowed time. Kidman had probably reported which squad car had been stolen by now, which meant that beat cops could be on their asses any second.

Almost as an afterthought, Sebastian reached into his pants pockets and fished around for his wallet, his phone, his cigarettes, and his lighter. It was important that he knew what tools they _were_ working with, since he was now bereft of all of his weapons. His phone was missing. His cigarettes seemed ruined when he inspected them, as though they'd been dunked underwater and held down — which struck him as odd, as he felt completely dry. His lighter still sparked a flame, though, and the contents of his wallet had gone untouched. Strange. He sighed and shook his head as he put everything but his cigarettes back in their place. Those, he discarded on the seat beside him.

"Stealing a marked car isn't exactly what I'd call inconspicuous," he said. "We should take the subway. It's easier to hide in a crowd."

Joseph hesitated, and for a second it looked like he was about to start up another fight, but he eventually replied with a somber, "You're right. We need to go."

Much to Sebastian's surprise, Joseph didn't even bother to wait for the next freeway exit in order to pull off and pull over. He moved into the shoulder almost immediately, making sure to park between two streetlights in order to stay as concealed as possible, and he killed the engine. From where they were right now, it would be easy to hop the fence and disappear off into a side street. Good. The more nonsensical their path, the better.

"You think you're alright to walk for a while?" Joseph asked.

"Yeah," Sebastian answered. "Yeah, let me out."

Joseph nodded his head in affirmation, then unbuckled his seatbelt and eased out of the car. Like all police cruisers, there was no handle on the inside of the back doors, and Sebastian would be stuck in there until his partner saw fit to let him out. He was suddenly grateful that circumstances were so dire and that Joseph was such a fair-minded person. On a normal day, if their roles had been switched, Sebastian probably would have let him sit in there for a full minute or so longer than necessary while he enjoyed a cigarette. It may have been petty and childish, but Sebastian would take any small victory he could in their almost-but-not-quite spat.

And yet, Joseph still hadn't opened the door. Shit, had he really decided that _now_ was the best time to sink to Sebastian's level? Sebastian glanced out the window to his left before looking behind him just in time to see his partner open the trunk. What the fuck was he doing?

"Joseph," he called out, banging lightly on the window to get his attention. "Hey!"

"Just give me a minute," Joseph called back. " _You_ might not have been injured in the escape, but I was. I'll let you out once I patch myself up."

That wasn't really a good reason as to why he couldn't have let him out _before_ going to patch himself up, but Sebastian decided not to dwell on it. They could fight later. 

Shaking his head, he tugged at the knot of his tie before pulling the whole thing off, and he immediately went to the buttons of his waistcoat after. Walking around looking like a detective wasn't exactly the best way to blend in, and while the two of them would still stand out anyway as a Hispanic man and a Japanese man walking around together, they needed to try to avoid being noticed as much as possible. It was a strange thing, Sebastian noted, to suddenly feel resentful of the way he looked — to be annoyed at the fact that he wasn't just Average Joe White Guy. He thought he'd gotten over _that_ particular brand of self-conscious bullshit halfway through high school — though, admittedly, circumstances were a slight bit different this time around.

By the time Joseph finally came by and opened the door, Sebastian was stripped down to only his shirt and slacks. Even his harness and his badge lay discarded on the seat and floor, though part of him felt a sense of sentimental reluctance to leave the badge behind. He could still remember how proud and excited he'd been the first time he'd put it on, and to just abandon it now felt like an abandonment of his duty entirely.

"Damn it…" he muttered to himself, scooping up his badge as he slipped out of the car.

As Joseph shut the door behind him, it became apparent to Sebastian that his partner had had the same idea about their general attire. Joseph had lost his harness, badge, waistcoat, tie, and even his gloves. In the latter's place was a freshly-wrapped bandage on his left hand, covering most of his palm and half of his forearm. He almost looked like a boxer taping up his hands before a match. Sebastian eyed it warily, wondering what kind of wound would require a wrap that large — especially one that didn't appear to be bleeding.

"You alright?" he asked.

"Yeah," Joseph said. "It's a minor burn. Nothing too serious. I still have complete motor control in my hand."

Something about that answer didn't feel quite right. If it was so minor, then why had he been in such a rush to cover it? Sebastian decided not to press the issue, but he tucked it away in his mind for future reference should it come up again. He gave Joseph a small nod in affirmation and tucked his badge into his back pocket for safe-keeping.

"We should move before too many people see us out here," Joseph said.

"Wait."

There was still something about Joseph's appearance that made him stand out. Sebastian took a step forward and reached behind his partner's back, pulling Kidman's stolen gun out from the waistband of his pants. Joseph eyed him suspiciously, but Sebastian offered no explanation as he placed the weapon on the hood of the car. Walking around with an exposed weapon was a bad idea to begin with, but it was even worse with how well-kept and stuffy his partner still looked. Joseph didn't resist or argue when Sebastian grabbed his shirt at his sides and yanked it free from its careful tuck into his slacks, letting it hang free over his belt. From there, he reached up and undid the first two buttons of his shirt, then kept going north to his hair. He ran both hands through it, shaking it out of its perfectly combed style. There was a tiny smile on Joseph's face when Sebastian finally handed his weapon back, and he was chuckling quietly to himself.

"It's like I'm back in the first grade," he said, tucking the gun behind his belt again — this time using his shirt to obscure it from view, "having to pass an inspection from my father before he sends me off to school."

For some reason, that remark hit on someplace _extremely_ sensitive inside of Sebastian. He glanced away from Joseph with a fake, half-formed smile in an attempt to hide the sting.

"Yeah," he said. "Well. My dad skills never made it to first grade."

With that, he turned and headed for the waist-high chain link fence that lined the shoulder of the freeway. He was acutely aware of Joseph's hesitation and the way he lagged behind, but he had no intentions of waiting for him.

"Sebastian," Joseph called after him. "I didn't mean…"

But he was already over the fence. After a second, he heard his partner scramble after him as he trotted down the small grassy incline and wandered into the back parking lot of whatever office building they had ended up at. Once Joseph fell into step, he blew out a heavy breath and uncomfortably adjusted his glasses.

"Once we find a subway station," he said somewhat awkwardly, "we'll be able to take it to the northwest end of the city. We shouldn't have to go too much further out of its borders before being able to find a place to stop for the night."

Sebastian glanced over at him and cocked an eyebrow in confusion. "We're leaving the city?"

"Yes," his partner said solemnly, "Sebastian. We are."

"That sounds a little extreme," he said.

"Like I said," Joseph told him, "all of KCPD will be looking for us. We need to go somewhere outside of their jurisdiction. If at all possible, we should avoid using our credit cards or even our real names for a while. Do you have any cash on you at all?"

It took nearly all of his willpower to not burst out laughing right then and there, but Sebastian was at least able to confine it to a snort and an incredulous shake of his head. The whole thing just seemed so ridiculous to him right now — not the situation itself, exactly, but just the way that Joseph was talking about it. Because it was _Joseph_ talking about it.

"What are you laughing at?" his partner asked.

"Are we really going to stand here and just pretend like this isn't the kind of shit that I've been saying for the past two years?" he responded. "I remember you yelling at me about conspiracy theories and lecturing me about how there was no such thing as the Illuminati."

"There isn't," Joseph said. "The organization behind the KCPD is called Mobius."

Sebastian turned around to stand in Joseph's direct path and held a hand out to stop him in place. If his partner seriously thought that he could drop a bomb like that and then deflect with another "a lot has happened," then he was in for a surprise. The name Mobius was the last thing that Sebastian had learned in his personal investigation — the last thing he got his hands on before he'd gotten sucked into STEM. It didn't at all surprise him that they were the ones behind all of this, but _boy_ had Joseph learned an awful lot between then and now — especially for someone who insisted that he didn't want to be involved in the first place.

"Did Kidman tell you that?" Sebastian asked.

Joseph hesitated.

"No," he said after a beat. "No, I saw the name printed on the lapel pin of one of their people."

"Who?" Sebastian pressed. "Did you get a name?"

"A woman," Joseph told him. "A Hispanic woman, to be precise, with long hair and glasses. She said her name was Tatiana Guiterrez."

Those two words set off a chain reaction in Sebastian's head. The spark of familiarity lit a fuse through his memories, vague and jumbled as they were, burning past horrors from the hellscape that was STEM that he would have rather forgotten. Eventually, it clicked. The nurse in the hospital — her name tag, her photo on that missing person's flyer…

"Joseph, I know her," he said.

"I thought the name sounded familiar, too," Joseph replied. "Is it possible that she was connected to the Elk River killings?"

"No," Sebastian said. "Well, maybe. But I met her in STEM. She was a nurse."

"A nurse?" Joseph asked. "She looked like she was on the way to a business meeting when I saw her."

Sebastian felt a chill go through him. If Nurse Tatiana was affiliated with Mobius, then why the hell had she helped him in STEM? Armed him? Given him sanctuary? It had gotten to the point where seeing her face had become one of the few small reliefs he'd gotten in that nightmarish place. It must have been the case, then, that Mobius hadn't just plugged him into STEM as an easy way of killing him. They must have been using him for something… But what?

"We need to get out of here," he said suddenly. "Since I first picked up Mobius's trail, I've carried around five hundred dollars in cash just for emergencies like this. That should get us through the next couple of days."

"I have about eighty on me," Joseph offered. "We'll be alright."

Before that sentence was even finished, Sebastian was already heading for the street. As long as they kept away from the main roads and used side streets and back alleys to their advantage, Sebastian figured they should be alright. He led the way, weaving around street lights and dodging behind buildings to avoid as many passers-by as possible. Unlike his partner, he'd grown up in this city and had also spent seven years as a beat cop patrolling the streets; he knew every hiding spot and shortcut like the back of his hand.

The trip was made mostly in silence. Joseph never asked where they were going, and so Sebastian saw no reason to tell him — or to say much of anything at all, really. It almost felt like they were back in the field again — like this was just some case that they were pursuing. From a work standpoint, their partnership was perfect. They could wordlessly and effortlessly read one another's movements and intentions, which made both interrogations and high-stakes incidents fairly simple matters, all things considered. It had saved both of their lives on more than one occasion in STEM; in fact, Sebastian never felt safer than when he had Joseph covering his path with a sniper rifle.

The thought was a sobering one. It was so strange, how memories of STEM flickered in and out of his consciousness. On a surface level, they seemed almost normal. His brain recalled them just like any other memory of any other event, but there was a distinct underlying wrongness attached to them. The images themselves came back just fine. Every location, every encounter, every trap — Sebastian remembered them with crystal clarity. Each one felt distant and out of order, though. It was hard for him to determine a timetable for anything, and there was a strange sort of depersonalization about it all — as though it had happened years ago or even to someone else entirely, and Sebastian was merely recalling the story as it'd been told to him a thousand times.

While that probably should have come as a relief to him, it actually worried him far more than anything else. He'd seen this before in case witnesses and trauma survivors; they came out of the incident seemingly unaffected, only for that experience to linger and fester in their minds as a mental illness. Those people always got worse before they got better, and some of them never got better at all.

 _And I've already lived through trauma before,_ he reminded himself.

Sebastian tried his hardest to push the thought from his mind, but it refused to go away. He didn't lack _so_ much in self-awareness to try to say that Lily's death wasn't traumatic, but he always tried to tell himself that his many months of grief had been his way of dealing with it. Joseph had tried at one point to convince him that his personal investigation into Mobius was just a manifestation of that trauma in the form of misplaced guilt — that he was just desperate to find someone, _anyone,_ to blame, even if he had to make up a villain entirely. Sure, they both knew _now_ that the threat was real and that Sebastian hadn't been chasing at shadows, but the thought that he may have been going crazy never left his mind, even if he refused to acknowledge it.

What really terrified him were the possibilities of what was going to happen to him now — what his unconscious mind would do in order to cope with the trauma he'd endured _this_ time around. Would he slowly descend into madness, lacking the perspective necessary to see what was happening to him? Or would he suddenly just snap one day and disappear beyond the point of no return?

He set his gaze and locked his jaw. They would be coming up on the subway entrance soon, and right now the most important thing he had to focus on was just how he was going to get through _tonight._ He could cross all other bridges when he came to them.

"There, up ahead," Joseph said from behind him, snapping him out of his thoughts. "I never expected I'd be so happy to get underground."

Sebastian really couldn't argue with that. They took the stairs down into the subway station two at a time, and Joseph wasted no time heading towards the ticket machine. Sebastian nearly opened his mouth to protest, knowing that he had more money between the two of them by far, but he let it go. He knew that this was his partner's attempt at gaining a little bit of personal control over the situation.

The wide-face clock that hung high on the blue-gray stone walls read 9:32, which Sebastian's brain automatically translated into 2132, and it was the first true grasp of time that he'd gotten since waking up. Christ. It had only been a little bit after 1630 when they'd gotten the call about the incident at Beacon. How long had they been in there? It occurred to him now that it could have even been days. There was nothing around to indicate what day it was — for all he knew, they could have been in there for a whole week.

As late as it was, though, the subway station wasn't exactly lacking for people. Each of the steel yellow benches had at least one or two occupants. The one closest to where they were standing held two: a blonde-haired teenage girl almost young enough to be Sebastian's daughter and a seemingly young guy in a light gray sweatshirt with the hood pulled up. They didn't seem to be together; the girl had a set of earbuds in and kept her eyes on her phone, and the guy seemed content to stare at the floor and train tracks — that was, assuming that he wasn't falling asleep. Still, the sight of them struck Sebastian as strange. Even if they were just college kids, what the hell could they possibly want to head out of town for on a Tuesday night?

If it even _was_ still Tuesday.

Joseph pulled him from his thoughts as he handed him his tickets. They passed through the turnstiles, and Sebastian made it a point to avoid the bench with the kids on it. Well, they were kids to _him,_ anyway. He was probably just paranoid and jumpy after his trip through STEM, but the reality of it was that he wanted to avoid people in general as much as possible — at least until he got his head on straight. He leaned up against one of the concrete pillars near the tracks as he waited for the train, and Joseph came to stand beside him soon thereafter.

"Listen, Seb," his partner said quietly. "About before…"

"Save it," he told him.

"I didn't mean—"

"I know," he cut him off. "I know. Just… Whatever it is, save it until we're home for the night."

Joseph gave a small sigh and nodded his head weakly in agreement. He seemed to get the message loud and clear: anything even remotely revealing or personal really needed to wait until they were out of earshot of anyone else. Even if it _seemed_ like no one was listening, they very well still could have been.

"I'm exhausted," his partner offered instead.

"Same," Sebastian returned. "Think you'll be able to sleep tonight?"

Joseph gave him an uncomfortable look. "I think we should just focus on catching our train first."

Sebastian gave him a tired nod, and that was the end of their conversation for now. The only thing that kept him from nodding off on his feet was the thunderous roars of other trains as they came and went, some of them close enough for the whole platform to rumble and shudder.

Minutes passed, but eventually their own ride bolted into the station, rolling to a stop beside them. As soon as the doors opened, they stepped on board and took a seat directly beside where they'd entered. The rest of the car was empty, save for the other two passengers that had stepped on with them. The kid with the hoodie sat across from them, though a bit off to the right. The girl took a seat on the far other end of the car in order to avoid all three of them entirely. Sebastian really couldn't blame her. A young girl traveling alone on the subway at night? She was brave to have even bothered in the first place.

To his left, Joseph rubbed at his eyes beneath his glasses and visibly stifled a yawn. Sebastian gave him a sympathetic look. The train doors closed and the whole thing jolted to a start, though it quickly caught momentum as its speed evened out.

"Lean on me if you want," he offered.

"Are you sure?" Joseph asked, looking concerned.

"Yeah."

It probably wasn't the smartest idea, as Joseph was the only one between them who had a gun, but that gun would be useless anyway if he was too drowsy to use it properly in the first place. Joseph took a deep breath and seemed to weigh his options, but he eventually sank down in his seat and laid his head against Sebastian's shoulder.

"You'll wake me up when it's our stop?" he said.

"Of course."

Theirs was the last one, anyway, so it would be impossible to miss.

The girl got off at the very next stop, leaving Sebastian and Joseph alone with the hoodie for the next forty-five minutes of their ride. In spite of himself, Sebastian found his gaze gravitating back in the kid's direction far more often than he would have liked. There was something both unnerving and familiar about him, though he had to wonder if he was just associating every white guy in a hood with Ruvik by default.

 _Keep it together,_ he scolded himself. _You can't afford to start cracking up now._

For the most part, he tried to keep his focus on Joseph. He could tell from the way that his partner was breathing that he wasn't actually asleep, and every once in a while he even caught sight of him blinking. His own question re-entered his mind and bounced back and forth between his ears. _Do you think you'll be able to sleep tonight?_ He seriously doubted it — for both himself and for Joseph. While he couldn't speak for his partner's experiences, Sebastian knew that the last time _he_ had been on a subway, he'd had steel beams thrown through the windows at him, splattered in blood with the words —

"You. Will. Suffer."

Joseph's voice took him by such surprise that he wasn't even sure he'd heard it at first. As it settled in, a wave of dread washed over him. His heart pounded hard in his chest as he slowly turned to look at his partner again, only to find Joseph sitting upright and staring at him in a hauntingly placid way. There was a silent expectancy in his expression, as though waiting patiently for Sebastian to respond or react, but Sebastian could manage neither. He merely stared back at him, dumbfounded and slightly terrified, feeling himself tense as though expecting Joseph to snap and attack him again. Just as he'd done back in STEM.

The subway rolled to a halt at the second to last stop — the last one within the limits of Krimson City. Sebastian turned to look at the hooded kid again, and this time, the hooded kid lifted his head to look back. Sebastian's insides churned as the horrifying weight of recognition slammed into him like a shotgun blast to the chest. White hair. Blue eyes. Full lips tugged halfway up into a smirk.

No. No it couldn't be…

_Leslie?_

The hooded man slowly rose to his feet and gave Sebastian a knowing look before he headed for the door and stepped out onto the open platform. Sebastian scrambled to follow him, standing just inside of the train car so that he could watch him go.

About thirty feet away, the man vanished — flickered out of existence like a flame being extinguished from a candle. Sebastian felt the cold hands of terror grip him.

The doors closed. The train began its journey once again. From behind him, Sebastian heard Joseph calling out to him, but his brain was racing too quickly with unspoken fears to react.

"Seb? Is everything alright?"

He didn't have an answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry it's taken so long for me to update this story, but I recently made a huge move from east coast USA to west coast USA. On top of the move being hectic, it's taken a while for me to feel comfortable enough in my new home to actually write. But I'm all settled now! With a little luck, updates should become more regular.
> 
> This story is decidedly NOT TC&TB-verse. I mention this now because I'm going to be taking elements from TC&TB to use in the story later, but Bleeding Effect is NOT a sequel to TC&TB. They both exist in two separate universes (especially considering I didn't really guess Myra's personality correctly before we got a chance to meet her in The Consequence. ouch).
> 
> As always, I welcome all constructive criticism. This fic in particular is kind of experimental, so I appreciate feedback on this one more than any other. Thanks so much for sticking through my long hiatus and thank you for reading, guys.


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